Posted
by
timothy
on Monday March 21, 2011 @05:30AM
from the not-the-doctor-with-the-homophonic-name dept.

teh31337one writes "Motorola's locked bootloader for their Sholes-family devices (Droid OG, Milestone, DroidX, Droid 2 etc, not Atrix 4G) has finally been cracked. @nenolodexplains on his website: The Motorola Sholes platform uses a trusted bootloader environment. Signatures are stored as part of the CDT stored on the NAND flash. mbmloader verifies the signature on mbm before passing control. mbm verifies all other signatures before allowing the device to boot. There is a vulnerability in the way that Motorola generated the signatures on the sections stored in the CDT. This vulnerability is very simple. Like on the PlayStation 3, Motorola forgot to add a random value to the signature in order to mask the private key. This allowed the private key and initialization vector to be cracked. This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date ... They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They also locked the memory."

I totally agree! My motophone is stuck in 2.1 with all its bugs and the additional bugs Motorola has, and will not get an upgrade, unless a kind hacker does the job that Motorola should have done.
The problem is that the list of companies I won't buy a phone from is getting longer and longer. Sony, Motorola, and of course, apple.
Sad.

How about Nokia? N900 is fairly open. The one thing no radio transmitter should let you do is modify the frequencies that you are using to be outside the permitted spectrum, although I don't see a problem with listening.

These days it seems that most transceivers can be modified. The web abounds with entry codes or simple circuit modifications that near on anyone could make to increase the available frequency range. Here in the Philippines (Sta. Cruz in Manila) you can pick up hand held or base station type radios that can transmit AM / FM / CW / SSB pretty much continuous from 1 to 1000MHz. They cost anywhere from $200 USD to about $3000 depending on what features you might want.

This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date.

The submitter should know that the HTC Thunderbolt is just a customized variant of the HTC Desire HD provided for Verizon. Locking it up is almost certainly a Verizon-demanded attribute, and not an initiative from HTC. The Desire HD is unlocked in most of the world, and I doubt if a locked version can be obtained in countries with a more enlightened phone system.

This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date.

The submitter should know that the HTC Thunderbolt is just a customized variant of the HTC Desire HD provided for Verizon. Locking it up is almost certainly a Verizon-demanded attribute, and not an initiative from HTC. The Desire HD is unlocked in most of the world, and I doubt if a locked version can be obtained in countries with a more enlightened phone system.

The lockdown may very well have come from Verizon, we'll have to see with their newer devices. HTC have tried to lockdown their devices before, and this is just the next step. Check up on eMMMC, s-off and root for G2, myTouch 4g, and yes, even Desire HD.

Desire HD being sim unlocked is irrelevant. The lockdown I'm talking about is with their eMMC chip, and now their bootloader/recovery

Locking it up is almost certainly a Verizon-demanded attribute, and not an initiative from HTC.

Absolutely. For sure. If you look to how Verizon's business model works, it's by nickle and dime-ing their customers through extended feature add-ons. Much in the same way AT&T did in the 80s with their landline (POTS) subscribers. Having a locked down phone is the only way to control that subscription based business model.

... as a programmer is to spend less time trying to hack, tweak, or otherwise add value to platforms owned by companies who want to strip away my rights as a user to modify and operate those platforms as I see fit.

Here's why: In the US, the only way to get a phone is through a carrier. (Well, not the only way, but still) And carriers like to control the devices on their networks so they can control the features and functions active on them... so they can sell the services that should be free (like texting) for a butt-raping price.

And if the carriers decide "for technical reasons" they cannot host a particular model or make of phone, they will lock them out of service on all of the

It is because of the influence of telecoms that these things happen. I will recall to your attention a story that came not long after the iPhone became common throughout Europe. Despite the fact that local carriers in Europe permitted tethering and that it was previously enabled in their firmware, AT&T's influence caused Apple to push out firmwares that disabled that for everyone because even though that functionality was disabled locally, people were acquiring EU firmware to enable tethering on their

So when it comes to who has the most influence, I think it is demonstrably the carriers in the US that carry the most weight... they make the most money so naturally, they are the most influential.

Nope, not quite. The US carriers are still pretty small compared with the world market, even in terms of profit. The difference is that nowhere else in the world do carriers provide revenue-sharing deals with phone makers. If a European or Asian mobile phone network offers a phone, they buy them, then sell them to their customers (typically via a 'subsidy', which is really a loan at about 15% APR, with repayments hidden in the monthly fee). In the USA, this is how it works for most phones, but for thin

Here's why: In the US, the only way to get a phone is through a carrier.

Correction, for the LAZY that is the only way.

In the United States, the price of 2 years of service includes a discount on a phone. There's no discount on the service for not buying a phone at the same time as the plan. T-Mobile used to offer such a discount, called "Even More Plus", but it'll probably go away in a year once AT&T completes its acquisition of T-Mobile.

Get yourself an N900 before they all run out. Seems almost certain that the industry as a whole is moving toward totalitarian lockdown that makes the current Apple look like GNU. My prediction is that Samsung will be next with locked handsets.

Meego (the only thing that could bridge the PC and phone) was all but murdered, HP/Palm haven't released anything but press releases. What hope is there that in 5 years time we will still be able to have Debian chroots in out pockets?

Blackberry? That's the phone that comes with a trackball, right? I heard their next model will run IBM DOS 5.0 with DOS Shell, and it'll remove the trackball in favor of a 3-button rs232 ball mouse. The DB-25 connector will increase the form factor a little bit, but damn, I'm so buying that phone.

I totally agree with your sentiments, but none of my (6) blackberry phones have done any better. They require charging every night. (18hr standby is the advertised life for my bold). I'm still missing the 'good old days' when I would charge my phone once per week. Try to go camping for 3 days without a solar charger. 'Just turn it off when you aren't using it???' The blackberry boot time is as bad as any.

I'll try to bring up battery performance again this year at GoogleIO, but seems like no one reall

Most of the people I know have Android or an iPhone, and they're all in search of charging outlets by early afternoon. Just can't see going back to that 90s-like level of utility, myself...

With great power comes great battery drain. Utility is defined as being of practical use. In the 90s I had a phone that I could use to make a call and send some SMS. You want that? You got that. Buy yourself an Android phone, deactivate bluetooth, wifi and GPS. Turn off all bands associated with data transfer. Dim your screens to barely readable levels, and only ever turn on the display for the purpose to make a call. You'll find your battery will last close to 4 days. You'll also find you wasted a big portion of your devices capabilities.

In terms of practical use the utility of the mobile phone has never been higher. While I was overseas I was able to click a button on my phone to turn it into a mobile access point so I could get my laptop on the internet. Yeah it chewed through battery but having that ability alone made it all worth while. While walking around Prague I was never once lost due to the GPS functionality. I was able to quickly look up public transport timetables and even book international train tickets. While sitting on the train I had a library of music available to me, and when the Japanese earthquake hit I found out about it while I was on public transport far away from a laptop or TV.

The world is at my fingertips now, THAT is the utility of the modern phone, and you know what happens at the end of the day? I plug it in. Either to the wall, the car, or a common USB socket. My phone has never gone flat.

As for lockdown... my phone was not locked to any provider out of the box. My phone was rooted in a matter of minutes. My phone has a custom kernel on it provided by the hobbyist hackers over at xda-developers. Neither of this added anything that the manufacturer didn't already provide, but instead simply bypassed my stupid carrier's slackness in providing updates. In fact the only thing I have so far found even slightly wrong on my phone is that I can't connect my Wiimote to it due to a bluetooth issue.

Actually, it depends on what you're using the phone for.... things that wear the battery down quickly on an Android phone are:

1. Having the screen on 100% brightness. (most new phones have a light level sensor and can automatically adjust the screen brightness... put it on this mode, it saves battery).2. Playing games constantly on the phone. Of course, it depends on the game, some of them are actually very CPU-friendly, some of them will peg the CPU and drain the battery super fast.3. In that same vein, le

Having the screen on 100% brightness. (most new phones have a light level sensor and can automatically adjust the screen brightness... put it on this mode, it saves battery).

This was commonly stated when the feature first hit the market. Most testing indicates this actually makes batter life far, far worse, assuming you don't already, continuously, operate your display at 100% brightness. In other words, if you make any effort to control your screen's brightness, chances are, on average, over the span of a day, you're doing better than the automatic display adjustment.

The problem with the automatic display adjustment is the fact that the display is continuously adjusted, freque

Sorry, but if you have to charge your phone after four hours, you've most likely been playing Angry Birds for four hours straight. In other words, either none of the people you know have to work for a living, or you're simply lying. My bet is on the latter.

With a locked phone they can give the provider control over the phone (read: appstore ), and the telecom provider. I think Motorola hopes to make extra money from the provider instead of the consumer.

You are right, if consumers wanted a closed phone they would have bought a iPhone. an android phone is NOT a closed environment, and locking one part down in an open environment leaves a mediocre (in comparison) product.

Whose to say the customer doesnt want the product? You're kidding yourself if you think hackers and tinkerers are a large part of any customer base outside dev products.

The only reason custom firmware and other general modifications have become a mainstream topic is because the minds behind the exploits release tools that are trivial to use. If there wasnt a "power on, point, click" sorta method the majority of people would continue to use the products as they were intended. You want something with added

The article is about a locked bootloader. Thats something that everyday consumers dont care about unless ofcourse the numpties at customer service hotlines blabber on about it(the case in EU?) It's in the realm of hackers and tinkeres

I don't think the general public really cares about locked bootloaders. However, they do care about half-decent phones, and IIRC the last half-decent phone Motorola produced that enjoyed any level of popularity on this side of the pond was the Razr.

Actually in Europe the word of mouth regarding the Motorola shennanigans regarding the bootloader spread pretty quickly.Add to that that Motorola Europe basically treated their customers like second class citizens regarding updates on the Milestonesand a bunch of if you dont like the bootloader buy somewhere else comments by the official support over here for thefollowing year, and you can see a scheme where the general public became overly frustrated and Motorola quicklywent from the only decent Android ph

The general public really don't give a shit about bootloaders. They're more concerned about how pretty the phone looks, what features it supports, how easy it is to use, how much it costs, and at a push what is the likelihood of long term support for the device. Talk about bootloaders to the average person and their eyes will glaze over. It's simply a non issue.

Personally I haven't even seen many Motorola devices recently in EU stores which may explain why they're not doing so well. As far as I can tell n

the stores aren't stupid. they don't stock the phones because their shelf space is worth more than the meagre sales they'll get. simply put, other phones will sell better.

on the issue of bootloaders, that's probably one for market research to determine. i do, however, find the "nobody non-technical cares about anything but how it looks" to be patronizing and wrong, and a reason a good whack of/.ers are embittered bachelors. surprisingly the general public are not as stupid as us ne

I didn't just say how it looks. I cited several points a typical consumer is interested in - looks, features, ease of use, price, support. The fact a phone is rootable or not is clearly going to be a matter of supreme insignificance for most users. Maybe a few geeks might care (as they might that there is a Linux kernel in some phones). Most users do not.

Motorola have never been very strong in Europe. I personally tried them once (E398), and won't buy from them again in a long time: bad industrial design (the connectors kept getting disconnected, both headset and charger, which is a pain), bad software (USB synch never worked), and bad support (never could get someone to actually try and fix my problems). Such a "perfect" trifecta requires not only a bad product, but a bad company company.

The "general public" may not care, but, before they buy they normally ask those of us who know and do care. When we tell them to avoid a "locked down" phone they probably don't even know what it means, they just know I think it's bad. Previously these people bought HTC instead, now I will direct them elsewhere.

"Being locked out of our own legally purchased devices is NOT normal."

Ever tried to access the air-bag controller on your car? Ever flashed your ECU and then expect the manufacturer to cover the consequences? Ever bought software that was reliant on a hardware dongle? Ever bought a large dedicated device (like a specialist microscope) that comes with some ancient MacOS version on the controller PC that you can never touch or upgrade without voiding the whole setup? What about trying to make a replacemen

Ever flashed your ECU and then expect the manufacturer to cover the consequences?... Ever bought a large dedicated device (like a specialist microscope) that comes with some ancient MacOS version on the controller PC that you can never touch or upgrade without voiding the whole setup?... Hell, some high-end cars have tyres that "talk to" the car so they know exactly when you fitted a third-party component so they can void your warranty.

The GP poster is not asking for the companies to cover his device when he installs something new on it. Warranties are made to be voided. He is just saying that they should stop trying to control him so that he can not install what he wants.

It seems these DRM schemes are getting harder and harder to break as the manufacturers are learning from the unlocking community. The iPhone hasn't had an unlock for iOS 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 yet due to Apple closing more security holes and implementing new checksums. (Anyone who has an unlocked iPhone for 4.1 and 4.2 is doing a hacked form of upgrade that prevents a full firmware/baseband upgrade, but new buyers are completely out of luck)

It seems like the rooting/jailbreaking/unlocking/modchipping community kinda small; a few geniuses figure it out and publish it in a handy software package for the rest. What does this mean for the future, will the locking/DRM powers outpace them?

Hopefully it will mean sales going down for phones that are crippled, and up for those that are not. As usual, spread the word about which phones to buy. The manufacturers will only respond to lost sales (and some of them are a little too dense even for that it seems).

Maybe. Only a few geeks and nerds care about bootloaders but they can tell friends "don't buy that because you won't be able to install that app that requires rooting/jailbreaking". Chances are that locked down phones will sale some units less than non locked down ones. But manufacturers might get more than that money back if locking down is appreciated by phone operators. If that's the case, locking down might make the difference between having a phone subsidized by an operator or not and that impacts heav

"Do not buy an MP3 player - you can only listen to music that's available on MP3 or been ripped from CD. Instead, you should buy a bunch of musical instruments and then you can listen to whatever you like."

Anyone who you say that to will give you very funny looks. Then they'll point out things like "I don't want to learn to play an instrument. And besides - only listen to what's on CD or MP3? So I'm limited to.... well, I'm not really, am I?"

Trust me, no consumer likes being told a manufacturer forbids them using their devices a certain way in order to milk them for more cash. Even if they never planned on doing any of the forbidden things in the first place.

And that's the difference right there. Apple will provide you with software support and patches for 2-3 years that will work.

Motorola, HTC, Samsung, give varing levels of support depending on how many units sold. the flag ship line might get 2 years, but you are lucky to get a single update to other phones. Or those updates are blocked by the carrier.

The carriers need to be locked out of phones other than sim cards. I was going to get an Atrix, but seeing how crippled it is because of AT&T I am chan

"I can't upgrade it whenever I like? By the time a version of comes out that I want to upgrade to but can't, the phone will be worn out from being used every day for 2 years, I'll be at the end of my contract and eligible for a heavily subsidised upgrade to the latest model. So again, I don't see why I should care."

I got my current phone (Nokia E65) in 2007. Apart from a broken display which cost me 12 € to repair and the scratched case which I do not care about the phone is perfectly fine. The contract I am on is older than that, though. 2003 at the latest.

I certainly am not representative of the majority of users, but not everyone treats their mobile phones and contracts as throw-away items. And not everyone takes subsidised phones.

If you can't get Angry Birds on the phone you're recommending, you're not going to win anyone over.

Jo Sixpack / Jane Peroxide don't care about your open platform. They don't care about homebrew, tracking, licensing, DRM, locked bootloaders ("Is that like a shoehorn?") or any other of that stuff which matters to you and me. They want to play Scrabble and update their bookface status with twatter. Don't kid yourself that it's any different.

What surprises me is that Apple hasn't modified iOS 4.x so that it will refuse to run unless its running alongside the correct baseband, thus preventing the "upgrade but dont upgrade the baseband" trick.

I don't think so. TinyUmbrella works by interrupting the upgrade process in iTunes, after iTunes upgrades the OS it tries to contact Apple to verify the signature on the upgrade. TinyUmbrella blocks the connection to Apple's server, so iTunes aborts the baseband upgrade with a temporarily bricked phone and an iTunes error 1013. All you do next is put the iPhone in DFU mode and finish the jailbreak and then activate the phone.

There may be network issues. Just like the FCC regulates what you do with your wifi antenna. Yes, you can get into your router and up the power on your wifi router, but I think it violates some regulations. I am not a EE, but I bet if you up the power it may screw up other frequencies.

For a cell phone, imagine if you started spewing crap packages on their network? Or somehow masked your id and got free service? They don't want people exploiting their network, which I understand.

Ideally they would put all the magic in hardware, then let your OS do whatever you want. Have the cellular radio chip handle everything, so the OS can just interface to it so the network is protected and you can't scam a fake ID. Then you could do whatever you want, like run up cell bills for running over your cap using p2p.

That's pretty much how it works AFAICT, so good guess. But the lock down in phone OS can't really be explained away by the lockdown in the radio units, otherwise open units would be more or less illegal, and I don't see the FCC going after Nokia for the N900, or google for the nexus phones.

Most cellular data networks converge with their landline networks almost immediately. If it were possible/desirable to "throw crap packets" or "exploit" their network, I believe their DSL customers would pose a much bigger threat. Most of these phones REQUIRE the user to get an unlimited data package when you purchase them.

As an observation, it should be noted that NOTHING of what they've done up to this point has honestly prevented anything like spewing packets on their network. The malware that got onto the phones through the app stores managed this all on it's own very nicely- and saying that this is a good reason for Apple's walled garden approach, is wrong as well as they had their malware incidents too.

"Terrorism," "piracy," and "think of the children" are excuses that the average person just seems to accept.

"There was a terrorist attack!? Maybe you should take away some of our rights that we claim we are better for having so that we can have a false sense of security! That couldn't ever be abused by a corrupt government! Humans can't ever make mistakes when they are given unchecked powers!"

"Oh, you implemented this strict and annoying DRM scheme because of pirates? It's all their fault even though you're

Why can't you use your own phone as you please, even more so if it's Android, an open platform?

The only reason I can think of is piracy, which seems to be the justification for everything nowadays.

Seriously, this is a genuine question, not some sort of philosophy.

I suspect it's got less to do with piracy and more to do with customer returns. These phones are fundamentally consumer items, and like most consumer items a high level of returns is an absolute killer for your profits.

Phone shops aren't really set up to deal with phones that have been significantly messed around. They can reload the software from a PC provided there's enough of the firmware left on the phone to support this, but that's about it. Combine a burgeoning community of hackers who are turning

Also, and I think this is the main reason: pressure from the providers.Here in the US, it's about impossible to get a phone that hasn't been locked to a provider, and crippled.When the provider gets a cut for every app you buy through the "sanctioned" channels, can charge outrageous fees for music services and ringtones, and can charge you an outrageous amount of money for things like international calls and would lose that money if you could call through apps like Skype, well then the provider also would

They already managed to pass a tethering app disguised as a flashlight through the Apple Store review process. I really doubt they can't pass through a trojan. Just disguise it as an app that needs to access the web for a valid reason but that in fact is calling home to know if it should activate the trojan or not. Then you simply flip the switch on the server once it's approved.

A guess as to what "Open" refers to in this context: Android is open source. iOS is not... Basically, anyone can put Android on their device.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the manufacturers of mainstream Anroid devices can't lock them down so the people that buy them can't put on their own versions of self-baked Android. It's not Android's fault, but it damn well is Android's problem:(

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the manufacturers of mainstream Anroid devices can't lock them down so the people that buy them can't put on their own versions of self-baked Android. It's not Android's fault, but it damn well is Android's problem:(

I'm pretty sure that parts of the LGPL (which a parts of Android are undoubtedly licensed under) makes it clear that the user must be able to:

0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source.1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version.

Not in the right context. Android is a truly open platform. You can go get the original source and do damn well what you please with it, so can the vendors who are modifying it and packaging them on their phones. It is the hardware that is being locked down through the use of bootloaders which are not part of the Android system itself.

Hate to reply to my own, but think of this analogy. If I run Linux on a computer where the BIOS is intentionally screwed up so that the operation system I installed doesn't run properly, does that make my copy of Linux any less open?

As a practical matter: If you're unable to find hardware that will run said copy of Linux, yes. This is, unfortunately, becoming more and more the case on Android. The only current phone that'll let you do what you want with it (Nexus S) is built on sub-par hardware.

I thought Android devices were "open"; if so shouldn't one be able to change their OS more easily?

Other people have given accurate answers, but just for clarity -- most Android phones consist of an "open" OS on a "closed" device.

Imagine you're designing a vending machine. You can use a 100% free Linux distro as its core OS. But you can hide every data interface behind a padlock such that your customer can't install a different Linux, or install extra applications -- they just have access to the coinbox and the product selection buttons. You could include your own non-free software on there -- the applic

Is it easier to jailbreak an iPhone (or iDevice) than this? I thought Android devices were "open"; if so shouldn't one be able to change their OS more easily?

Or does the openness of the Android platform refer to the fact that there is no restriction on the Apps you can install? Or is there something else I am missing?

*about this issue. I'm quite knowledgeable about a host of others though!

It depends on what you're referring to when you say "open".

The Android platform itself is completely open source. Anybody can download the source, modify it, compile it, etc. In that respect it's quite a bit more open than the iPhone OS.

The platform, in general, is also more open. You aren't necessarily tied to a single app store. Worst-case scenario, you can load an app from an.apk on an SD card or something. Which makes it far easier to develop your own homebrew/in-house apps.

1. To appease the carriers. The less control end users have over how they use their device, the better. This allows carriers to charge out the ass for things like tethering...

2. Planned obsolescence. If every user could upgrade their device to the next version of Android easily, you'd get (*gasp*) people only buying a new phone every 4 years instead of every one or two...

3. To minimize support costs - there's always a few idiots out there that'll brick their phones and then try to RMA them. Of course, switching to PC type OS upgrade/installation system would eliminate that problem right away.

It's pretty much 100% 1 and 2.
Both the carrier and manufacturer get kickback for shipping the phones with certain apps preloaded, and since they are part of the system image, unremovable without some extra work (rooting). Every Verizon android phone, for instance, comes with Amazon Kindle/MP3, Verizon's Navigator software, CityID, and Blockbuster pre-installed, and there's nothing you can do about it.
In addition, things like usb tethering (not wifi) is supposed to be a standard feature for android as of 2.2, but is disabled in most phones.
As far as planned obsolescence, while you can't directly prove it, one nice example is Sony Ericsson, which promised for months and months that it would upgrade its X10 line to the latest android, then finally said it was impossible for "technical reasons", then announced its new line of phones, which would launch with the latest version of android.

Planned obsolescence works for dumb phones, but for smart phones especially right now it doesn't make much sense as the smart phones of just 2 years ago didn't have the processing abilities they do now.

Maybe in 4-5 more years when the majority of major changes have been done and we are all using multi-core 28nm processors in our smart phones you can say it is planned obsolescence however right now things are moving far to fast, for that.

You're partially correct, of course - older phones often don't have the processing power to run the newest version of their OS - case in point, iPhone 3G, or the HTC Dream.

However, there are cases where it's the other way around, and the phone has more than enough horsepower to cope, but is being shackled by an overprotective manufacturer - See the subject of this article, for instance: Motorola's Android phones starting from the Milestone - why wouldn't those be able to run Gingerbread? Or even Ice Cream w

what about radio frequencies? should those be restricted? Do you know how trivial it really would be for a a virus to turn a cell phone into a cell phone jammer? In order to get the most flexibility some things have to be done in software however that flexibility comes at a price. your walking around with a cell phone jammer all it needs to do is a few software tweaks.

Every phone should offer two modes of operation: One that is locked down by the manufacturer making him liable for any malfunction, and one that removes all the locks and limits and shifts liability to the user. That way everyone would be happy.

and if that user(or a virus that was only able to work because of changes the user made) then accidentally turns their phone into a jammer, should he be liable too when someone else can't call emergency services and someone dies as a result?

Of course they should be liable! If you tinker with your car and thereby cause an accident you are liable for any damages, not the manufacturer. If your "off-the-shelf" car displays a fault that leads to an accident the manufacturer is held responsible. We already have rules for all possible scenarios.

I am dumbstruck as to why the mere act of adding software to an already existing, well explained and satisfyingly regulated problem suddenly makes everything so complicated and somehow "special". Whether it is